A Metaphor in America

Over the weekend Christina Romer, Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, said that she agreed with Warren Buffet that the U.S. is in an "economic war." Let's hope it's not a war like the war on poverty, the war on drugs and the war on terror--none of which the U.S. has won, and a good case can be made that none of them are winnable. War, war, war. Perhaps it is time to ask if the dominant metaphor meant to engage the U.S. populace still serves the country well.

Lyndon Johnson introduced the metaphor in a big way back in 1964 in his State of the Union Address where he announced his War on Poverty. Richard Nixon brought in the War on Drugs. A few years later he even brought in the War on Cancer, and we all know about the War on Terror. It would seem America has a very limited repetoire of responses to things that it identifies as killing its citizens. And it was only a matter of time before a journalist was bound to turn the metaphor against the government, as when Chris Mooney wrote The Republican War on Science in 2005.

War is a popular metaphor south of the 49th. And why shouldn't it be? The U.S. is a country that started through a revolutionary war, then expanded its territory through wars against aboriginal peoples, then held itself together through a brutal civil war, only to arrive as the dominant world power after WWII. War is in the very DNA--to use another metaphor--of America. And so when a President or politician wants to convey the gravity of the situation, they declare war, shorthand for the more earthy "we are in some very deep shit here, folks."

The problem is that the metaphor is evocative, rather than rational, which is precisely one of the reasons it gets used. War requires a marshalling of resources, bold action, swift response. Much can be justified under the banner of war. And so America has wrecked havoc far and wide in its War on Drugs, imprisoning more of its citizens that any other country, exporting its war to Central and South America and even to Afghanistan, where that war intersects with the War on Terror and might very well be working at cross-purposes to it. War doesn't lend itself to reflective questioning; in fact, it blows right past it. Imagine if instead of declaring a War on Terror, simple questions were asked from simple facts: there are people in parts of the world who hate us so much they want to kill us. Why is that? What is it we can and ought to do to address this hatred? Different options suddenly begin to appear; ah, but this is all Monday morning quarterbacking, to use another popular American metaphor (and one from a game that has war as its metaphor...Is there no escape? As metaphor in America, war is a hall of mirrors).

Now we come to one of Obama's key advisors saying we are in an "economic war." I do note that it is not the President himself who spoke, but Romer's ready adoption of the coinage suggests the metaphor is again in play, and may yet infect not simply the larger discourse on the economy but the very nature of the actions that are taken and the attitudes that support them. How can we stop it before it takes hold?....Declare War on the Metaphor!

(Note: You will then understand how deeply, when I first came to Canada, the talk of peacekeeping struck me; I would even say touched me. I knew nothing of Lester Pearson or Canada's allegiance to its peacekeeping principles. Peacekeeping was more than a breath of fresh air to me; it was a warm and steady breeze. Canada's recent questioning of that heritage and its movement towards combat forces is a topic for a later post).